Horn releases my hand. I glance at him, but he simply crosses his arms as if content to watch this play out. My heart quickens and the urge to fight returns.
“Mmm, you want to break free, to scratch and claw? Do it.” Tail brings me close, so we are nose to nose. My feet don’t even touch the ground.
“No.” The tip of his tail slides under my skirt. “I won’t fight, but if you take, you’re a bigger monster than you appear.”
He drops me, and I stumble back and land on my ass, grazing my palms on the rock floor. “And what does all this surrendering give you, Julie?”
“I want to find a way home.”
“Ah.” He turns away. “I pulled some weeds for dinner. You can have them raw, or as a soup.”
“Why did you say ah?” Does he know how to get home?
“Because you are fresh meat, you don’t understand how this place works. Going home isn’t possible.”
“Yes, it is.” Gran never stopped hoping my mother would come back, but she never found a way to open the door to Under from our world. It can only be opened from here.
Both monsters study me like I am the strange bug to be examined. Here I am the oddity. I didn’t freak out and fight the first monster I saw like most people must, because I understand what causes the changes. And somewhere deep in my mind, I must know what undoes them. I spent most of my life listening to Gran talk about Under and how people became monstrous. She admitted that losing her temper had made her foot worse, but it had taken her years to realize the connection.
She will be excited to know that the changes can be reversed. Though what that connection is I don’t know.
Something within Horn changed to allow his fingers to revert, even if he doesn’t know how he’s controlling them. But if it was as simple as remaining human, or changing back to human, then I wouldn’t be here. A portal or something should’ve opened and let me leave.
I glance at the puddle that is twice the size of my bath at home and consider stepping into it and praying for a miracle.
“Water only goes one way,” Tail says as though he knows what I am thinking.
“I know.” Water flows downhill, that means there must be a way to go up. “Where does it come from? Is there a waterfall or something?”
“No. Only puddles. That one is good drinking water. There is another deeper in the cave that we use for bathing, but you’ll have to excuse the bones.”
I can feel the shock stretching my face even though I’m trying very hard to remain calm.
Tail laughs, a cold slithering sound. “Neither of us were here when they arrived. There was nothing we could do.”
“Did you eat them?” How many bodies were in their bath?
They are both silent.
Finally Horn answers. “That is all there is, aside from other monsters.”
“But…” They were all human, even though they didn’t look it. Right? Or were they so changed that eating a monster that looked like a goat, or a snake, or a cat meant it was like eating that animal? I didn’t want to find out. “Can I have some weeds?”
Tail dumps a handful of the yellow wilted plant on a flat piece of plastic that they had scavenged from somewhere.
“Thank you.”
There are no chairs and if I sit on the floor, it will not be very polite, or elegant given my panty-less situation, so I stand and take a bite, hoping that it won’t kill me. It tastes peppery and sharp, like something best put in a salad with other greens.
My stomach rumbles so I ignore the bitterness and eat the weeds, as they call them.
Horn goes over to Tail and they talk softly in what I euphemistically call the kitchen. It’s an area with flattish piece of wood propped up on two rocks. Horn’s hand settles on Tails lower back where fur meets scale.
Is he telling Tail the details about the deal, and about how he is worried he can’t protect me alone?
The weeds became tasteless in my mouth as I watch them talk. They obviously know each other well and are as close as two creatures who are designed to kill and fight can be. They are allies against those that are bigger and badder. Those that will eventually come after me.
Tail rattles, then nods and glances at me.